Human rights and social justice groups around the world were overjoyed last week when the U.N. General Assembly adopted the long-awaited U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The disappointment came when four countries with sizeable indigenous populations—Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand—voted against the declaration that was more than two decades in the making. Eleven countries abstained.
Although non-binding and mostly symbolic, the adoption of the declaration is seen as an affirmation of indigenous peoples' rights at a time when, in many regions in the world, indigenous peoples face daily threats to their well-being and survival.
Canada took issue with the broad wording of the document, specifically the articles pertaining to provisions on resources, lands and territories. There was also a concern that in land claims disputes, courts could be asked to rule on whether the declaration is binding.
Australia's ambassador to the U.N., Robert Hill, told the General Assembly that his government had previously voiced dissatisfaction with the declaration because it placed customary above national law.
Both Australia and Canada said that signing on to the Declaration would jeopardize the rights of non-native citizens.
"I am sorry we can't sign on," Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl told CBC News before the vote. "It's not balanced, in our view, and inconsistent with the Charter."
But Ed Bianchi, coordinator of Kairos' Aboriginal Rights Program, says none of these reasons "hold any water under close scrutiny," and he's worried they'll have the result of generating animosity toward aboriginal peoples.
"It creates this picture where somehow honouring and protecting and promoting the rights of indigenous peoples poses some kind of threat to non-indigenous people and that's what I'm most upset about," says Bianchi. "They've done it in such a way that could easily turn people against First Nations, Metis and Inuit."
Speculation was rife in May 2006 when, shortly after a visit to Ottawa by Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that his government would no longer back the U.N. Declaration, despite previous long-standing support by Canada.
"It's common knowledge in Australia that Howard was responsible or had a major influence in changing the Canadian government's position," says Gary Highland, national director of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation based in Sydney, Australia.
"The [Australian] prime minister is someone who throughout his whole career has never shown any degree of empathy for the suffering of Indigenous peoples."
The state of the Australian aborigines as a result of the catastrophic effects of colonization is similar to that of their counterparts in Canada. Aboriginal communities in both countries are ravaged by poverty, alcoholism and substance abuse, high suicide rates, violence, sexual abuse, and have life expectancies well below national averages.
"By almost every social indicator, aboriginal peoples in Australia are at the bottom of the heap," says Highland. "An aboriginal child born in Australia will live 10 years less than a child born in the developing countries of Bangladesh and Nigeria."
Australia's closest neighbour, New Zealand, has managed to close the life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous people to within a few years, he says, while in Australia it still hovers at 17 years.
In late June, in response to a groundbreaking report called Little Children are Sacred which documented widespread sexual abuse of children in remote aboriginal communities in Australia's Northern Territory, the federal government launched an intervention by sending troops into the region to assist police in monitoring the situation.
The report said that both indigenous and non-indigenous men were the perpetrators of the abuse, and linked the extent of the abuse to a myriad of social problems in the area, including the availability and misuse of alcohol. While many of the communities have been dry for years, Highland says "grog runners" truck in alcohol and sell it at vastly inflated prices.
Declaring the situation a national emergency, the Howard government has announced a number of measures to combat the problem, including compulsorily acquiring lands around some aboriginal townships for a period of five years, to be controlled by non-aboriginal officials.
Both Australia and Canada had a program of assimilation of aboriginal peoples for many years. For much of the twentieth century, young children were forcibly removed from their parents. In Australia, the children were adopted out or institutionalized; in Canada, they were sent to church-run residential schools.
Policies such as this have since been recognized as having had a devastating effect on the original inhabitants of both countries.
However, Highland says that following a landmark high court decision which recognized aboriginal title to land prior to the arrival of the Europeans, between the 1970s and the 1990s there was a strong resurgence of aboriginal culture and strides made toward self-determination.
But the last decade has seen a return to the assimilation policy, and many of the gains have been "wound back," says Highland.
"The rejection of the U.N. declaration was perfectly consistent with the government's approach to Indigenous peoples, which has been to deny their rights, to limit their decision-making powers, and to return to a form of paternalism in Australia—a failed policy of the 1950s that is being re-introduced."
The U.N. has been highly critical of both Australia and Canada's treatment of their indigenous peoples. In his annual social justice report, the Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma, slammed the failure of the Australian government's aboriginal policy.
In Canada, studies have estimated that the suicide rate among First Nations is five to six times higher than among non-aboriginals. In January of this year, 21 young people in the northern Ontario community of Kashechewan attempted suicide—one was only nine yeas old.
NDP member of Parliament Charlie Angus has called on the government to deal with the crisis, and to increase funding for special education and crisis counseling in First Nations schools. The Kashechewan reserve has been plagued with tainted drinking water, flooding, and substance abuse, including gas sniffing among children.
Gas sniffing has also been a problem in some aboriginal communities in Australia. In February, funding was announced to expand existing efforts to combat gas sniffing and other substance abuse. The Government spent more than $1.5 million over the last two years to fight substance abuse in the Alice Springs area, which has had the effect of reducing drug trafficking in the region, according to the Department of Indigenous Affairs website.
As for land claims, indigenous advocates claim that most of the remaining natural resources in the world are located within the territories of indigenous peoples, further complicating land claims negotiations. In both Canada and Australia, land claims can take decades to be resolved. "Canada's policy has always been all about retaining access to lands and resources at a minimum cost to the government, and they're doing it today," says Bianchi, adding that Canada still requires aboriginal people to surrender their rights in order to secure a treaty settlement.
However, recognizing a problem with the slow pace of land claims, in June Harper announced increased funding and the creation of an independent tribunal in an effort to speed up the approximately 800 unresolved land claims across the country. Earlier this year, the Senate recommended setting aside $250-million a year to settle land claim disputes. Bianchi regrets that Canada didn't simply abstain altogether instead of voting against the declaration and unnecessarily "drawing this big line in the sand."
Because rights, he says, are inalienable: "no one can give them to you and no one can take them away."
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